


Cornfield Letters

by Vangelion



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Eventual Smut, Fluff, M/M, Mutual Pining, Slow Build, but not really, jack is just a small thing from Indiana, kind of an AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-05
Updated: 2017-03-05
Packaged: 2018-09-28 11:29:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10098548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vangelion/pseuds/Vangelion
Summary: Jack Morrison's mother is an angel of the Mid-West, sending letters of encouragement and cookies to soldiers in training and in active service. In helping her out with a particularly large batch of letters Jack is introduced to the life of Private Gabriel Reyes.





	

**Author's Note:**

> It has been quite a while since I have written fan fiction and I chose to throw myself into a multi chapter slow burn Overwatch one. Yay Me!

The mid-summer Indiana sun was as hot as always as the farmer’s son sprawled lazily in a red and white stripped hammock suspended between two wizened old trees at the edge of the yard. Beyond that lay field after field of golden corn with the occasional sugar cane and soybean crop mixed in, a splash of brilliant contrasting green.

Cornflower blue eyes watched the expansive fields lazily as a soft breeze shifted the tassels of the corn stalks, their slow swaying dance causing a sleepy yawn to pass through slightly chapped pink lips. Jack was bored swinging back and forth on the hammock, but the young man barely out of his teenage years knew the perils of falling asleep out on the hammock, the main one being his father deciding to dump him out of it with a below of a laugh so he kept blue eyes trained on the field and waited somewhat impatiently.

He waited for the rumbling of the old truck coming through the winding roads of the cornfields that heralded the most exciting part of living in rural Indiana.

The arrival of the fortnightly mail.

It was normally a fierce battle between himself and his mother to see who could get to the mail first, but she had to go to the small town several miles away with his father earlier that morning to pick up some essentials for the house. They were quickly running out of toilet paper and the small sheets of white bathroom glory where fractionally more important than trying to beat her energetic son to the mailbox.

Shifting slowly the Indiana farm boy dropped a leg over the side of the hammock and began to rock himself back and forth, the lazy breeze not nearly enough to move his young muscled form in the well-worn fabric.

Years of helping his father out in the field and on broken down machinery under the hot sun had helped greatly with Jack’s development from child to teenager to young man. Blue eyes were set beautifully in a lightly tanned face with cheekbones and jaw so strong they could crush heart with a gentle head tilt.

His body was equally tanned with a height inherited from his father wrapped up in lean muscle that shifted smoothly under the golden skin with every swing of an axe while cutting wood, pound of a hammer while fixing fences or shift of a shovel from digging trenches.

He was every bit the Midwestern farm boy with golden hair and golden features, spending his days alternating between farm work and home school, his hyper active brain proving to be a benefit in the end as he finished his high school career a year earlier than most with scores that would have made valedictorian if he had have attended an actual school and not one set up in an alcove connected to the kitchen inside the old Morrison family farmhouse.

The long awaited rumble pulled Jack out of his bored rocking and he bolted upright in the hammock so quickly that he almost tumbled out of the darn thing, getting his leg wrapped up in it and almost tearing the fabric in his haste to escape and bolt for the front of the driveway where the mail would be left in a mail box that looked exactly like the farmhouse, a project he had completed with his father in the work shed one rainy weekend several years ago.

Jack's long legs carried him up the long drive to the mailbox as fast as lightning and he arrived just in time to see a rusty red pickup pull up along the dirt road, the door flinging open and its driver disembarking with the engine still running.

“Hey, Mary!” Jack called to the older woman enthusiastically as he slowed to a trot, a sun weathered face turning to him with a gentle smile missing a few teeth here and there and a stack of letters and packages in her arms.

“Hi there, Jack. Looks like you beat your Ma to the box this time, huh? What’s that make it now? 3 to 7 her way?” Mary chuckled softly as began to hand the packages over to the energetic kid once he arrived barely panting and eyeing the boxes and letters with gleaming blue pools.

“Yeah, but Ma cheats,” Jack tried to sound scandalized as he arranged the boxes in his arms so none would fall on his trip back to the house, but he was a tad too excited by the delivery to put much effort into his acting, “she’s always in the house when the mail comes and I’m usually halfway across a field. I’m fast, but even I can’t beat a head start that big.”

“Well maybe you ought to do the cooking and cleaning for the house and make your Ma head out to the fields then, huh?” As the last package was handed over Mary reached out a work hardened hand and pinch one of Jack’s cheeks, ruddy from excitement and his short burst of exercise, “you should ask your Pa about borrowing the truck one night soon and head over to our farm for dinner. I know Kate and Daphne would be happy to see those baby blues of yours.”

Jack whined playfully at the pinch and tried to wiggle away from Mary as gently as possible now that his arms were full of precious cargo. Jack liked the old motherly farmer/mailwoman and indulged her like he did his own, but he wished she would stop trying to set him up with her daughters every time she saw him, “isn’t Daphne seeing Terry from three farms over?”

“That she is, but Terry is as dumb as a wet brick and I’d like my girls to find men who can tell me what comes after l, m, n, o, p without having to sing the entire alphabet song out loud to remember,” Mary reached up and adjusted her fraying straw hat atop her rowdy dark curls as he gave jack a wink, “you’re a good boy Jackie. Got to snavel you up for one of my girls before someone else swoops in.”

Jack tried to keep the slight discomfort off of his face at the idea of spending the rest of his life with one of Mary’s girls and covered it up with a toothy smile and a quick lie. They were both lovely in their own right but they were not his type at all, “alright Mary I’ll ask Pa and see what he says but the cane needs harvesting soon so I can’t promise anything.”

Satisfied that the golden boy Jack would do just as he said he would Mary tipped her hat and moved to climb back into the old pick up and the waiting mail, grumbling quietly at how many more mail deliveries were left for the day but with smile on her face all the while as she looked forward to seeing other people in her community just as happy about her arrivals as Jack had been.

Jack stood in the drive until Mary drove off safely and did his best to wave even with his arms loaded up before heading back to the house, practically speed walking as his eyes skimmed over what writing he could see on various packages and letters. He could make out a package from his aunt that had come from across the country as well as a box containing some car parts his Pa had ordered a month ago to help Jack get his own hunk of junk car working again after the engine nearly blew a few months ago.

However, just like always most of the packages and letters we for his mother-a true saint of the Midwest.

It was two years ago that the woman had begun to send care packages and letters of encouragement to soldiers in training and in active service against the growing Omnic threat and ever since then their fortnightly mail drops had gotten bigger and bigger over time.

Mostly they were letters from soldiers who had received the packages and letters, writing back to say thank you and how much the gesture meant to them, but sometimes there were return packages containing trinkets that grateful soldiers had picked up during deployment in various parts of the world.

Jack knew his mother had never left the states, but with the amount of foreign items on display around the house ranging from every country starting from Australia to Zimbabwe you would think she was the most worldly woman in existence instead of a round in the middle housewife and mother whose prides and joys were her son, husband and her blue ribbon winning cherry pies and pecan cookies.

Whatever the end result Jack was happy this had all began in the first place because that is how the farm boy met _him_.

As focused as he was with the bounty in his arms Jack managed to make it back to the farmhouse without tripping on the loose dirt of the drive and place his quarry upon the too big for a family of three dining table, sorting what was for his father, his mother and himself into three separate piles. It took all of his self-control not to simply rifle through the pile and find what he had been waiting for and desperately wanted while leaving the rest unsorted.

Towards the end of the pile Jack’s tanned hands closed around it, an inauspicious white envelope that had once been clean and crisp, but was now wrinkled and creased by its journey. The farm boy’s heart let out and excited flutter as it recognised the black scrawl of the hand written address as that of a soldier in training that he had been conversing with for a few months now ever since Jack helped out his mother with a particularly large delivery of letters and requests for packages. The presence of the letter took what was left of Jack’s self-control and he pulled out a chair to sit and tear the letter open with careful hands, not wanting to catch the paper that was inside and ruin the letter he had received from a man he had never met but was oddly enamoured with.

_Dear Jack_

_First of all tell your mother I said thank you for the cookies. They are always a great change from the mess hall slop they try and pass off as food here at base. I tried to make this batch last me longer than three days this time but failed pretty badly._

_Also the replacement socks you sent have been a great help as well. I’m not getting blisters from my boots anymore thanks to them which makes drills a lot easier to get through….especially the ones at 5m when I would rather be sleeping in my too small bunk while my bunkmate lets off the worst bean farts I have ever smelt in my entire life. I’ve told Farris he needs to go to the clinic about his intestinal bullshit before we both suffocate from methane poisoning during the night but he just laughs like he has no idea what I’m talking about. Guess the bug guy is so used to his own stink that he doesn’t notice it anymore._

_How is the farm going? In your last letter you said something about sugar cane needing to be harvested. How did it go? If it went well tell your mom I expect more sugar cookies with my next letter ;)_

_Hey now that I think about it would you mind sending me a picture of your farm? I’ve never seen a proper working farm before and it’ll be nice to have something different to look at other than concrete walls and dull training grounds every day._

_Can you tell I’m itching to get out of here? I know I only joined up 6 months ago, but I signed up for the military to help with whatever is going on with the Omnics, not to run laps every day and do target practice._

_There are some rumours floating around base about a special advanced program meant for the best of the best. Not for the faint of heart and all that bullshit that is meant to scare people away, but if it is more than a rumour I want in._

_I’m the best in my unit so logically they should take me right? I kind of sound like I am fishing for a compliment here, but I’m really just trying to get up the nerve to ask my squad leader about the program. That man’s glare puts mine to shame and I don’t want to be stuck with extra cleaning duty for a week for being nosy if there really isn’t anything to nose about._

_Speaking of nosey Farris just got back from the showers and is trying to read over my shoulder so I should end this here. Seriously do you think anyone would miss this guy if my rifle “accidentally” misfired during training and took his head off? I don’t even think I would mind the discharge it would get me in order to be rid of him. Hell they should give me a medal for saving the ozone layer if I get rid of him._

_Look forward to hearing from you soon Jack. Your letters are seriously the only thing keeping me sane while I’m here._

_Signed,  
_ _Private G. Reyes._

_P.S DON’T FORGET MORE COOKIES_

The letter was over far too soon for Jack’s liking and he read it over three of four times just to keep his fluttering heart moving, chuckling every time he read Private Reyes’ jokes about his bunk mate or the bad food, only returning the paper to its envelope when he heard his Pa’s truck pull up at the front of the house and his Ma holla at him to come and help bring some shopping in.

The blonde was careful to fold the letter and stash it safely in the back pocket of his jeans as he did s his Ma asked. He’d put this letter from Reyes with the others he kept in a box beneath his bed when neither of his parents were around to good naturedly poke fun at him about it.

Pausing as he headed for the front door Jack doubled back as a thought struck him, going for his phone that was sitting on the kitchen bench and opening up the camera.

Outside the sun was beginning to set over the Morrison family farm and Jack couldn’t help but think that would be a great picture to send Reyes. The blonde spent the next half hour talking picture after picture until the sun was gone, trying to get everything prefect for another young man practically worlds away.


End file.
